Thursday, 10 November 2016

#ReadaPlayaWeek: The Riots

It’s not always possible to see every play. Plays are incomplete on the page but they also have a separate and just as important existence there. This initiative (in its third year) encourages us (and hopefully others) to read more widely. And, as achieved in 2015, we shall try to choose 26 male playwrights and 26 female playwrights for our play choices. The plays from the first half of this year can be seen here.

Week 45:
Gillian Slovo’s The Riots (2011)

Following the lack of public inquiry into the riots
that spread from London throughout the rest of England in the summer of 2011,
the Tricycle theatre commissioned its own examination of events. Gillian
Slovo’s verbatim piece compiles talking heads from various walks of life; from
politicians, policemen and lawyers, to the rioters themselves and the innocent
victims of the violent eruption. What was to blame? Race relations? Social
divides? A culture of greed and opportunism? Slovo doesn’t come to any
definitive conclusion, but to do so would simplify many of the complex and
interconnected issues at play in our society.

What does result is an in-depth and wide ranging
kaleidoscope of experiences and opinions, beginning with a blow-by-blow account
of the riots themselves. Amidst an atmosphere of unrest, the killing of Mark
Duggan by the police inspires protests from the black community in Tottenham.
Yet, this is merely the breaking point, the spark which fires the ‘powder-keg’
of ongoing ill-relations and mistrust between the community and the police
force. We hear accounts of the lack of police action, from both sides –
seemingly the force’s hands were tied by low numbers of officers on duty and a
fear of violent retaliation from the rioters (many of the policemen interviewed
refer to the Broadwater Farm riots where PC Keith Blakelock was killed). For
the rioters, this inaction acts more as an insult, and the vandalism and
anarchy seems as much a reaction to this as the looting of chain stores was a
material repercussion of the capitalist deprivation of the working classes.

From the chaotic memories of the riots, Slovo moves
onto a sort of post-mortem interrogation, relaying the hypotheses of numerous
authoritarians and supposed voices of reason including Diane Abbott, Iain
Duncan Smith and various high court judges. One comment that stood out was
Michael Gove’s likening of the situation to a Rorschach blot test, in that
people will see what they want to see and thus their existing perceptions will
only be further confirmed. Incidentally, Gove then goes on to spout the usual
Tory guff about people wanting the reinstating of caning at schools, his
example of choice solidifying his status as an out-of-touch, rambling toff. However,
his initial point is an interesting one; there is a sense that Slovo is
preaching to the converted. While the focus on benefit cuts and the lack of
social platforms for poorer communities is an important factor to consider, as
this (in the play) is predominantly voiced by the socially mobile, vastly more
privileged interviewees, there is an air of left-wing, middle-class
soap-boxing. More telling is the view of Sadie King, resident of the Pembury estate,
who recalls an environment of white, middle-class moralising when do-gooders
arrived to clean up the (already clean) estate; ‘It felt like an invasion, like
people not from our community have to come into our community to clean up. It
was patronising’.

Slovo hones in on the injustice of scapegoating
individuals within the judiciary system. Some people received much harsher
sentences than their individual crimes warranted (David Swarbrick received a 2
year sentence for stealing some moisturizer), as a means of setting an example,
which is all rather draconian and seems desperately counterproductive. But the
resounding voice is that of Mohamed Hammoudan, whose home was torched during
the riots. As an innocent victim it is fitting that he gets the final word; he is
despondent as he recalls that the emergency services ‘had no plan’ and
contemplates having ‘to start a new chapter without having the seeds there from
the past’.

Slovo’s play presents an intelligent perspective on
the state of Britain, yet doesn’t quite manage to capture the cacophony of anger
and disparity felt by the Tottenham community at the centre of the disruption –
perhaps due to too much pontificating on the part of the big wigs and MPs.
There is an essence of ‘what if…?’ in The
Riots, it seemingly unpicks the seams of society to diagnose its problems,
yet the truths that hindsight unveils (somewhat paradoxically considering the
verbatim genre) don’t seem to have any practical function or resolution in the
real world. Five years later not a lot seems to have changed, in fact race and class
relations/divisions seem more fractured than ever - just consider the ‘war on
immigration’ and instances of overt racism following the Brexit vote. So while
it seems Slovo and many of her contributors would like us to take heed of what
happened in August 2011 and its repercussions, whether politicians, the police
force, and society as a whole will take that on board is another matter…